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Darlington
Drinker 173 Newsletter of the Darlington Campaign for Real Ale - Feb/March 2009 THE
JD WETHERSPOON pub chain stirred up a hornet’s nest when it announced in
January it was cutting the price of Greene King IPA to 99p a pint. And the
ire wasn’t confined to anti-alcohol campaigners. Tony
Payne, chief executive of the Licensed Victuallers Association, criticised
the move: “It does the trade no good at all, especially when we have
problems with the supermarkets. It’s leaving us open to attack from the
health lobby”. But
lobbyists like Alcohol Concern and the British Medial Association hardly
need the gift of such a one-off promotion. Their ilk regularly claim that
alcohol prices are reducing in real terms and must be hiked to save the
nation. The
truth, as any pub-goer knows, is that while the shelves of Tesco,
Morrisons, Spar and the rest are piled high with cheap booze, beer prices
in pubs have been racing ahead of inflation for years. Fact:
during 2008 a pub pint increased by more than double the rate of
inflation (see p3). Fact: between 1998 and 2008 the price rose even
faster, by 2½ times average inflation. Fact: between 1987-98 beer
increased 60% faster than inflation. Will
the critics and Government face the facts? Don’t bank on it.
Prices:
Up and Away THE
PRICE of a pub pint in our area increased by more than double the rate of
inflation in 2008, according to the latest Darlington CAMRA survey. The
Darlington branch of CAMRA has been monitoring the price of real ale since
the mid-80s. Pub drinkers have become accustomed to over-the-odds
increases for years, unlike supermarket shoppers who can buy subsidised
lager cheaper than water. And 2008 was true to form. Other Findings: *The
survey,
carried out by volunteers (see p15), was the branch’s most
comprehensive ever. It took in 142
prices in 46 pubs, spread evenly between town and country. In all, 91
different brands of cask beer were represented. *Country
pubs
generally charged more than Darlington town pubs: £2.55 against £2.33. *Guest
beers on
average also cost more than regularly-stocked ‘house’ beers: £2.48
a pint against £2.36. *The
cheapest pint was Samuel Smith’s OBB at the Glittering Star,
Darlington at £1.41, up nine pence (6.8%) in the year. A huge rise by
Sam’s standards; it had only gone up by a total of 10p in the previous
seven years. The next cheapest, Greene King IPA at Wetherspoons’ William
Stead and Tanners Hall, was 159p. *Dearest
in town were the
£2.95 guest beers - Pedigree and Theakston Bitter respectively - at
Darlington Council’s Arts Centre and Stressholme golf centre . Out of
town, though, the plush Redworth Hall hotel was asking £3.70 for a pint
of Black Sheep Bitter! *The
most commonly-found brews
were Black Sheep Best Bitter and John Smith's Magnet in twelve survey pubs
each; they averaged respectively £2.62 (distorted by the Redworth price)
and £2.21 a pint. *The
Budget was
responsible for upwards of 4p, plus VAT, of the rises, increasing with the
strength of a beer. *Some
pubs started 2008 by
hiking prices a further 10 pence. Darlington Drinker .…Twenty-Five Years Ago “NO NEWS yet of when and where ‘real’, cask-conditioned John Smith's Bitter will be re-appearing in this area, after its nine-year absence. We asked for details from Smith’s Darlington area office two months ago and ‘in view of the importance of the matter’ our request was passed on to Tadcaster HQ. Since then - nothing. What we do know is that a traditional version of the stronger Magnet ‘may follow but not at this stage’. Watch this space.” Darlington Drinker 22, February 1984 Spring’s
the Thing IT’S
A SURE THING: Spring will be early this year. Whatever the calendar says,
Darlington Arts Centre will be full of the proverbial joys a good week
before the vernal equinox. And
real ale drinkers and folk fans can rejoice at the thought because that
means it’s time for the town’s 23rd annual Spring Thing festival. And,
of course, CAMRA’s festival within the festival. Fifty
great ales from brilliant, imaginative small breweries will be
available from the outset, including many special festival brews, along
with six farmhouse ciders, a rare perry (pear cider) and classic
continental bottled beers. One
intriguing new ale already confirmed is a 5% bitter from Darwin brewery of
Sunderland, which is being brewed with “malt, hops and yeast relevant to
Charles Darwin” as part of the national Darwin 200 celebration programme. There
will be limited edition commemorative glasses (both pints and halves for
the first time), an unmissable CAMRA
membership offer and - undoubtedly - impromptu sword dancing on the
Saturday afternoon, in the very midst of the admiring throng! Best
of all, there will be no admission charge to the beery side of the
Spring Thing and it will be open to everyone, not just visitors to the
folk festival.
A Bottle of Note
Naturally
Darlington Drinker was more interested in the bottle - it was a beer
bottle. Where was it from? Mr
Scott left the bottle, pictured left, in April 1906 in a chimney which was being blocked
up. In the note he wondered if the flue will ever be reopened.
Sadly he didn’t say anything about the beer he had (presumably) just
supped. The
bottle is green, slender
and unembossed; its metal cap
corroded and unreadable. But although ragged, the label
- black and white with some yellow infill - reveals it originally
contained ‘Usher’s Extra Hopped Beer’. The museum guessed this referred to
Usher’s brewery of Trowbridge, Wiltshire (1824-2000), who also brewed in
London from 1890 until the last war. Then they heard of another Usher’s - Thomas
Usher & Son Ltd - who brewed in Edinburgh. And then we told Bowes press officer
Sheila Dixon of yet another possibility, as a J & T Usher Ltd opened a
brewery in Bristol in 1901. And there’s another helpful clue: the torn label said the beer was
bottled by ‘...isset & Co’. The partly-missing first letter seems
to be a ‘B’. It’s not clear why Usher’s would want another company to bottle their
beer, but perhaps Bisset handled their bottled export trade, including to
England? If any readers can help confirm the correct brewery - perhaps you’ve
seen the label design before - let us know and we’ll pass the details on
to the museum. It could quench the thirst for knowledge at the Bowes just
a little bit more. *THE bottle and note are/were on display in The Bowes Museum’s Streatlam Galleries until 13 February. The full museum will reopen thereafter following its transformation; details of events and exhibitions on www.thebowesmuseum.org.uk or 01833 690606. Photo of the bottle courtesy of the Bowes Museum.
Happy
Hammers DARLINGTON
CAMRA’s Winter
Pub of the Season has been selected by branch members. And
it’s the Hammers - Sunday name the Blacksmith’s Arms - at Preston-le-Skerne
that has struck gold. The secluded free house, tucked away off on the back road between Newton
Aycliffe and Great Stainton, pipped the George & Dragon in Heighington
village to the award. A presentation to Hammers’ licensees Beverley Hayman and Brenda Whear,
who took over the pub in 2004, was made by CAMRA pubs officer Pete Fenwick
in January. The ales on the day came from High
House Farm, Consett Ale Works and Yorkshire Dales. *THE
seasonal champions are chosen from the four parts of the branch area in
turn. The Hammers was chosen from County Durham (excluding Darlington town
and Teesdale). Next up for Spring is ‘our’ bit of North Yorkshire.
Attila the Winner ATTILA,
from Peterborough’s Oakham brewery, has been crowned supreme champion
winter beer of Britain 2009 by judges at the National Winter Ales
Festival. The 7.5% abv barley wine is described as having 'fruity notes and an elderflower aroma, with the taste of ripe berries and citrus fruit and a long bitter fruity finish.'
Festival organiser
Graham Donning called it a
spectacular beer, “a wonderful example of this rare beer style”. John
Bryan, head brewer at Oakham, was delighted: “Each
batch takes around five-six months to produce and this shows it’s time
well-spent”. The silver medal went to Elland brewery’s 1872 Porter, with bronze to
Sarah Hughes’s Dark Ruby. Theakston’s
Old Peculier from Masham won bronze in the Old Ales & Strong Milds
category. Community
Service THE
BRIDGE Inn at Middleton-in-Teesdale became a true community pub at
Christmas when it was taken over its customers. The not-for-profit
Bridge Inn Trust was set up with social enterprise funding. It is led
by director and “social entrepreneur” Chris
Jones, who is behind a similar venture at the Grey Bull at Stanhope in
Weardale. “The surplus we
make will be ploughed into good causes in the area. Country pubs are going
under all the time. They are a very precious part of the community and the
Bridge is no different - it was the last traditional pub left in the
village.” It intends to offer an ever-changing choice
of cask ales, with handpulled Ruddles County being a mainstay. (Perhaps
local beers can be stocked too, Chris? - Ed) The Bridge opens from 2pm
daily. QUITE HOW
the Bridge Inn became the last traditional pub in Middleton (if you
exclude the lounge bar at the Teesdale Hotel) is interesting. The Talbot was closed, in the face of protests from regulars, by its owners Teesdale Traditional Taverns in 1997 on the grounds that Middleton couldn’t support so many pubs. In the same year, the Romaldkirk based company amalgamated the King's Head in the Market Place with the adjacent Foresters. The pub traded under the latter name until Spring 2007 when the lessees left in a hurry. TTT's chief executive Hugh Becker said it "would reopen as soon as possible". The
freehold of the Bridge too was in the hands of Teesdale Traditional Taverns when the last tenants were in place. As the group is
known to have resisted previous offers to buy its pubs it perhaps still
does own the freehold, with the lease taken by the Trust. One of the main
controls TTT exercises over its pubs is the range of beers that can be
stocked, from which it draws an income. Club Wins on Cue THE
NORTH EAST’S Real Ale Club of the Year celebrated its success in style -
by serving its 1,000th different
cask beer for just a pound a pint. Customers naturally
‘queued’ up at the bar of Darlington Snooker Club to toast the fifth
consecutive such title for the family-run business. As regular readers will know, the first
floor premises are leased from motor bike shop boss Derek White. He has planning permission to convert the club into flats
and planned to do so at the break-point in Peter’s lease, next December.
The property, on the
corner of Northgate and Corporation Road, was custom-built as a billiards
hall in 1915. The club has ten full-size snooker tables and regularly
hosts top name players like multi world champion (and real ale fan) Steve
Davis. It
was named North East CAMRA Club of the Year not only for stocking up to
four guest ales but because it is an “excellent community facility”.
Lancastrians
Take York YORK
BREWERY has been taken over by Lancastrians in an amicable war of the
roses. Mitchells Hotels & Inns made the
acquisition “for an undisclosed sum” nine years after closing their
own brewery in Lancaster. Jonathan Barker, joint managing director with
his brother Andrew of Mitchells, confirmed that brewing will continue:
“It takes us back to our roots - our great, great-grandfather started
brewing in 1865”. York’s Tony Thomson said he began
searching for new investors last summer. “We’ve put in 12 years of
hard work to develop York Brewery and we feel we’ve taken it as far as
we can go.” York’s beers will go on sale in many of
Mitchell’s 60 pubs and continue to be available in the free trade.
“It’s business as usual,” said Jonathan Barker. Thirst
for Knowledge I
WAS ASKED by the editor (the guv) in December to visit pubs in our area to
help with the annual real ale prices survey, writes Malcolm Dunstone. I
had to accept the challenge… First visit
turned out to be my most expensive. The Bay Horse, Hurworth prices
everything at £2.90, be it North Yorks Best at 3.6% or Wensleydale
Coverdale at 5%. Friday was the branch coach crawl, so a chance to record prices from six pubs in the rural parts north of Darlo. I tasted some new beers that night: Marston’s Blazing Ale, Jenning’s World’s Biggest Liar and Caledonian Elf Esteem. The highest price was £2.75 for Wylam Haugh Porter. I popped in the Quaker
House that weekend and was pleased Steve’s prices had risen only 10p
a pint in 12 months. Always the cheapest real ale is to be had at the Glittering
Star: just £1.41 for Sam Smith’s OBB; couldn’t miss that. Gordon
accompanied me on several sorties, one of which included two ‘firsts’
for me. The Builders Arms was buzzing with customers; perhaps John
Smith’s Cask at £1.80 a pint was the attraction. The Central Borough
had Magnet at £2 and Morland’s Old Speckled Hen at £2.10. Several
of our trips ended at Darlington Snooker Club, all priced at £2.20
and always a warm welcome. Sheila came with
me to some country pubs. The landlord at the Black Bull, Great
Smeaton was very friendly and doing good trade with his three real ales
(two of them guests) at £2.50 and £2.60. The demise of the neighbouring Bay
Horse clearly benefited him. On the same trip
we spoke to the landlord of the Beeswing, East Cowton, who
complained of the very poor service he had been getting from Punch
Taverns. Another pub doing excellent business on the Sunday after
Christmas. Two days later
we called on the Chequers at Dalton to discover two Jennings ales
at £2.70 plus Banks’s Original at £2, a difference of 14 shillings. I
went for the Banks’s. Thirty-six pubs and countless beers: was I glad to
reach the end of the month. Sheepish No More BLACK SHEEP has come up with a bright idea: illuminated handpumps. The proudly traditional independent brewery has never shied away from innovation but felt that cask ale needed to strengthen its presence on bar counters increasingly dominated by the shiny lights of lager and keg fonts. So it’s
started installing handpumps for its Best Bitter made from zinc and chrome
and illuminated by LED lighting. The Angram-made pump also incorporates a
cooler to serve the beer at the right temperature. Black Sheep
managing director Paul Theakston said: “Hand pulls have always been
silent heroes - full of great strengths and qualities, but not really
noticed. We need to give our publicans good reason to take them out of the
dark, quiet real ale corner and put them proudly centre stage.” The Death of the
Local ? WITH
THE increasingly onerous rise in tax on beer, more and more pubs are going
under, in the unequal and unfair battle with supermarkets, writes John
Clark . Supermarket beer sales can be and are
subsidised, to lure in punters who then purchase other more profitable
items making up the loss. As more people start their night out on
subsidised plonk at home, they then go on to fall into the pubs and bars
of our towns and cities already the worse for their unsupervised excess. When the licensee or his doormen call an
end to this stupidity - all hell is let loose. Meanwhile the supermarket
giants laugh all the way to the bank !. Welcome to Britain's barmy binge culture -
fuelled through indifference, a refusal to see the light on the part of
the authorities and the drive for profit before responsibility. And what happens to the
pubs ?. Quite simply, they become another statistic in the tale of the ‘Forgotten Public
House’.... *THE
DARLINGTON area has seen
plenty of its own pub closures in recent years: Bridge Inn, Forge, Globe,
Railway Hotel, Locomotive, Rise Carr, etc, etc. Do send memories and
photos of your lost local to Darlington Drinker. Black Sheep Quiz BELOW
ARE this month’s Black Sheep Quiz questions. The sender of the first
correct answer drawn out of the hat on 23rd March will win a quality Black
Sheep T-shirt from the Masham brewery. Send your entry to DD Black Sheep Quiz, 6
Clareville Road, Darlington DL3 8NG or to dd@idnet.com. Include your name,
address and shirt size: sorry, no size, no prize... 1,
What was the average price of a pint of real ale around Darlington in
December? 2,
Who makes Black Sheep’s handpumps? 3,
Darlington Winter Pub of the Season is? Jason Crowther of Mowden, Darlington won the DD172 quiz and a large shirt. It was the Intelligent Choice report that said real ale sales are ‘moving towards growth’; they also said the beer market as a whole declined by 8%; SIBA stands for the Society of Independent Brewers (yes, the ‘A’ is superfluous).
Guide
Updates BELOW
is a complete list of updates to Darlington CAMRA’s acclaimed full-colour
beer and pub guide, Real Ale in and around Darlington & Teesdale,
which we published last June. You should still be able find a free copy
next to this DD at many of our regular stockists. If not, contact the
editor for a copy (contact details are as for DD editor on back page).
Please continue to tell us of changes to the availability of cask beer in
our area, whether good or bad news. Updates: COUNTY
DURHAM: TAWNY
OWL, Creebeck. Postcode is now DL2 1QE BAY
HORSE, Hurworth. Open 11-11 Mon-Sat, 12-10.30 Sun. www.thebayhorsehurworth.com NORTH
YORKSHIRE: STANWICK
INN, Aldbrough St John. Opening times are now 12-3 & 5.30-11pm
(6.30-11 Sat, -10.30 Sun). ANGEL,
Gilling West. Only Black Sheep available at present. TEESDALE: GEORGE & DRAGON, Boldron. The area code is 01833. STRATHMORE ARMS, Holwick. Closed on Monday and Tuesday.
Deletions: DARLINGTON: DARLINGTON RUGBY CLUB, Blackwell Meadows. No real ale at present. BINNS, High Row. Sadly, only a handful of beers left. COUNTY DURHAM: SPOTTED DOG, High Coniscliffe. No real ale at present. NORTH YORKSHIRE: LORD NELSON, Appleton Wiske. No real ale at present. (*Temporarily
closed pubs are those we believe the owning company is seeking a new
tenant for. They could reopen at any time.) LONGSTANDING
members of Darlington’s Campaign for Real Ale were saddened to hear of
the death, at
79, of Pat
Kilfeather.
Pat was the indomitable landlord of the Britannia for a quarter of a
century to 1994. He was one of a tiny number of licensees in the area to
stock real ale - in the fine form of Cameron’s Strongarm - at a time
when others were serving nothing but keg beer. Under Pat, and his wife
Amy, the Brit was one of just four of the town’s pubs to appear in
CAMRA’s first truly-national Good Beer Guide in 1975. By the 1976
edition it was alone. Irishman Pat was quick on the draw, with regulars
having their pint half-poured by the time they reached the bar. Some
instantly-assessed visitors were less lucky, turned away with a wipe of
the bar and a curt “I do not wish to serve you”. Even when they were
friends of his own son, Tom...
DARLINGTON
CAMRA DIARY DATES Tue 10 Feb: Darlington CAMRA Branch Meeting: Hole in the Wall (upstairs room), Horsemarket, 8pm. All welcome. Tue 3 Mar: Darlington CAMRA Branch Meeting: Glittering Star, Stonebridge, Darlington, 8pm. All welcome. Fri 6 Mar: Rural coach crawl: (Scorton/Dalton-on-Tees area). Departs Feethams 7pm, bookings: Pete Fenwick (01325) 374817; (07792) 093245. Thursday 12- Saturday 14 March: Darlington
CAMRA Spring Thing 2009 Beer Festival: Arts
Centre, Vane Terrace, Darlington. Darlington’s annual folk weekend, with
the beer festival within a festival: over 50 cask ales, farmhouse
ciders, classic foreign bottles and commemorative glasses. Free entry
to beer hall all sessions. CAMRA helpers needed, including for
set-up/dismantle Mon 9th /Sun 15th: contact Ian on (01325) 243228. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Darlington
Drinker is
published every two or three months by the Darlington branch of CAMRA, the
Campaign for Real Ale. Circulation 3,500. News, articles and letters
welcome. All items © Darlington CAMRA but may be reproduced if source
acknowledged. Editor: Brendan Boyle, 6 Clareville Road, Darlington DL3
8NG; (01325) 362092; email dd@idnet.com.
Additional contributors this issue: John Clark, Malcolm Dunstone, Pete Fenwick, Ian
Jackson. To
advertise, contact Fred Lawton: email Lawtonfred@aol.com;
(07710) 493514. Rates a snip at quarter-page £30, half page £50, full
page £80; sixth consecutive insertion free. Branch website: www.darlocamra.org.uk.
CAMRA HQ is at 230 Hatfield Road, St Albans, Herts AL1 4LW; (01727)
867201; see www.camra.org.uk
for all other real ale information.
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